Football Manager 2022 is a great take on the most popular sport of the world. It provides ways for both casual and obsessive fans to get more involved with their favorite club or almost any other team they want. The new animation system changes the experience quite a lot, both visually and tactically. Some transfer action might feel a little unreal and the game still generates new players that sometimes make little sense. But this is a solid game with a lot of options and plenty of incredible moments.
The gimmick of using a PlayStation 1 presentation might attract an audience. But the game needs more than style to keep players engaged, even if only for the around three hours the story needs to reveal itself. Chasing Static has some good elements but it never manages to get the right mix for a truly engaging experience.
Airborne Kingdom is not a long game, it can become repetitive quite easily and it lacks the depth city building fans are accustomed to. Yet the way the different elements are tied together, turns this game into a memorable experience.
All in all, The Medium is a good game, but not revolutionary and certainly not the new king of the genre. The story and atmosphere will stay with you long after finishing it, but the gameplay has a lot of room for improvement. If you prioritize a good story and a masterfully crafted atmosphere The Medium will not disappoint.
Tandem: A Tale of Shadows is a good game for anyone looking for hours of well-designed puzzles in some interesting locations. I appreciated how it organically expands the ways the two characters interact with the world. I liked the puzzle design, especially when it emphasizes how important it is for Emma to create paths for Fenton.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is a good superhero game. It may not be the best out there, but it is in the top 5. If you are a true Marvel fan familiar with the Guardians of the Galaxy universe it hits the perfect notes in almost perfect order. It tried to balance the videogames gameplay with a cinematic experience, focusing on delivering a quality single player experience.
A connection between narrative, setting, and gameplay is required to have even a halfway decent video game. The Edge of Reality fails to be engaging on any mechanical level. And if the Doctor Who franchise aims to deliver more video game experiences those in charge need to hire developers who can craft mechanics that connect to the story in interesting ways.
Aeon Drive delivers a very focused experience for anyone who loves classic platformer action and wants to test their skills against other players on constantly updated leaderboards. There are a lot of cities to get through and plenty of paths to master using the teledagger. But the game would be much more engaging if it dropped the 30-second limit.
I would like to see more use for the sacrifice mechanic and some extra ways to cheat the rules. But self-aware creatures, cards that immortalize failed runs, and general creepiness add a lot to the core concepts. Inscryption has all the necessary ingredients to set a new standard of quality for its genre and keep fans engaged for tens of hours.
Bonfire Peaks tries a little too hard to make relatively simple concepts seem deep and meaningful. The narrative of the unknown man is too laconic to be engaging in the long run. The gameplay, while delivering brilliant moments of discovery and achievement, is too repetitive. The two only connect in a meaningful way because of their lack of complexity.
ACE Team has specialized in weird worlds, but this is the first time the studio has managed to craft one that is also beautiful and immersive. Sometimes I wanted the gameplay spaces to be a little bigger, or even entirely open world. But I understand that The Eternal Cylinder needs structure and hope that the easy-to-understand mechanics and cute protagonists will allow a wide range of players to engage with the game.
Lost Judgment is more of the same with some fine tuning, but there are no revolutionary updates. There are more activities than ever, but the interface is the very same. There is a more fluid a spectacular combat system, but the AI is just the same. The analysis of the environment for clues still feels underdeveloped, and the tailing of people is still clunky, despite the new mechanics.
Just like Ancestors, AWAY: The Survival Series is based on an interesting idea, but the end result is far from being entertaining or even educational. Instead of being a nature documentary it is a rudimentary combination of platformers with a bad combat system and even worse stealth mechanic.
But the developers are good at creating a game world that draws evokes nostalgia. Their characters are fun and whimsical, although they do need more depth. Button City is a limited video game but, if the studio focuses on its strengths, it can surely create a world where the gameplay and the world are better synchronized.
Severed Steel will be a massive video game for a narrow group of gamers. If you love perfecting a plan and then spending as much time as needed to both car3efully and quickly execute it, you will love this experience. Running on a wall, diving through a window, all the time dodging enemy attacks, only to then slide and kill two enemies before finding a safe space is a fun time.
Tales of Arise is a successfully comeback story. It’s definitely one of the most refreshing Tales game and probably one of the best JRPGs launched in 2021. I’m not sure if Bandai Namco planned to make the Tales franchise mainstream, but that’s something that Tales of Arise manage to achieve, and that’s probably the best compliment I can give the game.
If you feel nostalgic for Diablo II: Resurrected is the best way to scratch that itch. If you felt that it was overhyped back then, the new release will do nothing to change your mind. And if you are new to videogames, you better start with Diablo III, since you will not miss anything story wise, and the experience will be much more satisfying.
Review code provided by the publisher.
Residual has a good main idea, but I found that there’s too little around it to make the experience compelling in the long run. I liked the world and the exploration, but I was less impressed with the crafting or the puzzle design. I wished for a stronger narrative hook to give me a clear reason to get somewhere or mine minerals or find more vines.
Star Dynasties is a good mix of ideas, setting, and complexity. The character-driven experience delivers unexpected thrills, weird situations, nice stories, and impressive catastrophes. Players need to invest a little of their imagination to get the best out of the game, but the overall experience is worth it.